You see, SiB has been a little…stuck. It’s embarassing, really, becuase we chewed through T11 at a steady pace. In fact I’ve felt that we’re the perfect example of the middle ground guild–we don’t raid a lot (6 hours a week), but we make steady progress when we do. We see content when it’s still “relevent” and “as intended” even if we never really get to doing hard modes.

We were the common denominator, and well, we just weren’t…getting anywhere. It wasn’t like we suddenly sucked or anything, I just started having vanilla era flashbacks to boss progression. When I was breifly talking about the nerf with Fuzz, my raid leader, we decided that we were just relieved. Our e-peens were not threatened. They’ve been too trampled by lack of progression to feel threatened further.

As I nudged Twitter I heard similar mutterings from other groups. Yeah, this nerf pre-patch is weird but…well, they were stuck, too.

If you’re looking for why Blizzard is doing this, I honestly think that is why. When your AVERAGE guild–not your “hard core” raiders, not your stacks of fail panackes, but your AVERAGE GUILD–isn’t getting anywhere, even when they are slowly accruing more gear, that’s when you nerf. Considering the burnout trains many people are holding tickets to right now, high levels of raiding frustration are not what you want if your goal is to retain players.

LOL Bug #1: if for some reason you can’t see Gunship, don’t just keep walking assuming it’s a graphics glitch even if everyone else is safely on the boat. You will fall and die…just ask our tankadin Solt.

LOL Bug #2: Icy blasts and other important Things On Ground To Not Stand in on Sindy’s platform are well nigh impossible to see. While you can see Sindy’s blasts of icy doom via the swirls (not the circles on the ground, oh no, but the swirls), whatever the little dragons cast is currently invisible. I apparently died by standing in 3 of them. Okay!

Which brings me to…
LOL Bug #3: A lot of people are having a hell of a time getting their buffs/debuffs to reappear, even after ditching whatever buff addon they were using. I wish I could tell you how I fixed mine, but really all I did was flail at settings in Interface and then relog and they magically reappeared. Relogging is the magic fix for a lot of things right now. Let me tell you, not seeing buffs and debuffs made Sindy fun.

We started late and still killed Sindy. ICC on normal mode, at least, is now /faceroll. I’d say that it’ a fairly “safe” place to play around on alts-that-might-be-new-mains.

On BM Hunters, In Particular

I did not particularly enjoy huntering last night. Of course I’m not going to give up on BM hunters that easily, but for now at least I’m going to be focusing on bringing up some other alts…just in case.

I don’t like focus. It’s seriously disrupted the flow that huntering has been for the past 5+ years. I’m going to give myself time to adjust, but initial impression is one of BLARGH FUCK THIS.

I passionately hate being terrible at something. Right now, I feel terrible at huntering, and it’s twice as frustrating since I used to be good at it.

Serpent Sting needs to last longer. I feel that with its current duration, it’s obnoxious to keep reapplying. Or maybe I just can’t cope with a focus restrained shot priority, I don’t know. It always seems like there’s one more shot I need to get in RIGHT NOW and I can’t because I have to steady shot for more focus and then kill command comes up and then oh god where did my focus go and fuck how long as serpent sting been down?

I miss my pew pew moonfire kitty. The heal seems like a lackluster (and far less useful) replacement for a pet skill I used to enjoy based on looks alone.

Well, a mantra for holy paladins and pretty much every other healer as well.

“I will not check recount.” Repeat it as many times as necessary to let it sink in.

“I will not check recount! I will not check recount!” /shifty eyes /recount show “… FUCK”.

When it comes to healing, being in a constant competition for numbers is sure to get you down, unless you happen to be that person who’s always on top (four for you, Glen Coco). There are just so many factors to healing output to render it much harder to measure than dps numbers. A lot of it has to do simply with class and spec – some have higher thoughput potentials than others, and we all know that disc priest absorbs aren’t often taken into consideration. Another factor is how many healers you have in your group. The more you have, the less healing is needed in general, so those who are faster (due to gear or simple reaction times) are going to have more healing done.

But if you’re competitive like me? Knowing that doesn’t make you feel any better. It makes you want to pout and sulk in the corner because you don’t feel like you’re pulling your full potential. The only solution to keep yourself happy is remember that if you make it through the encounter, that means you’re doing well and pulling your weight. Step away from the healing meters!

(Post inspired by the fact that I have been grumpypants over recount lately, even though I know better! I do wish that there were better ways to evaluate performance.)

Last night was Beat Our Heads on Rotface night. It not was an ideal night, as one of our tanks had gotten hacked, another tank was gone for his father’s birthday, etc etc.

I’ve heard some good reasons to AFK in my time, included “afk earthquake” and “brb, fire”. I can now add to the list one of our own, that in the very least is….random.

We’re sitting there almost ready to pull Rotface again when Josh answered his phone, then abruptly gets up from the chair and walks away. I halt the raid and flail in confusion while I figure out what’s going on. The problem?

Josh’s parents are driving home from picking his brother up at the airport, and they’re going to stop by and say hi!!!!!!

I have an evil evil plot in the works that I did not get to finish last night…TOMORROW, you shall behold my evil. Until then, I’m just going to talk about how I am a silly magpie, and how Blizzard nearly ruined shadow priesting for me.

You see, I’m not really….girly. But I do like things that are bright and shiny, so spells like penance and holy nova are Awesome Fun Toys. In hindsight, paladins have some of the most disappointing spells EVER. I mean, okay, Sacred Shield can be kind of shiny, but shouldn’t beacon be a BEACON? You know? A BEACON OF LIGHT? A BRIGHT SHINING PILLAR OF LIGHT?

I’ll never forgive Blizzard for failing me in that regard, just as I’ll never forgive them for what they did to my favorite Shadow Priest toy right next to Mind Sear.

THEY RUINED DISPERSION. It used to be that you’d turn into a FUN LITTLE BALL OF DARKNESS!!!!!! Now you’re just…er…more…dark? What?

NO, BLIZZARD.

UTTER FAIL.

I can’t be a bouncing ball of inky evilness now! This has totally ruined the spell and thus ALMOST RUINED SHADOW PRIESTING for me.

Don’t you DARE mess with my mind sear, or I’m going to have to do something drastic like…GO HOLY for my second spec, and we don’t want THAT to happen ever again.

And theoretically, on rare occasions, we also have an @Orithea! On less rare and more wordy occasions, we also have a James. Who does not have a Twitter because he is fail? Anyway, there had to be some bubbles in this blog somewhere.